


The Bilge Rat Journals

by AnnEllspethRaven



Category: Tall Ship Lady Washington
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 11:25:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19108696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnEllspethRaven/pseuds/AnnEllspethRaven
Summary: This collection, which is not fiction at all, are journals of my four month adventure as crew on the real life tall ship Lady Washington from December 1999 to April 2000. Or, what happens when a kid reads Moby Dick in high school and then ends up wondering too much about life in the great Age of Sail. The setting? Gray's Harbor Historical Seaport in Aberdeen, WA and assorted ports of call between San Francisco Bay, CA to Morro Bay, CA.





	The Bilge Rat Journals

#  **The Bilge Rat Journals**

This section is the smallest tangent to our farm. It answers the question: "Why do you have a lighthouse for a chicken coop?” In December 1999 through April 2000, I signed on as a deckhand on the  _ Lady Washington _ , the replica of an eighteenth century cargo vessel. This adventure changed my life profoundly. The following fourteen entries recorded my experiences; I am consolidating them here into one long page. Should anyone want to learn still more, please visit http://www.ladywashington.org for the ongoing adventures of this beloved sailing vessel.

*******************************************************

#  **1) LIFE ON THE WISHKAH**

Greetings! “Wishkah” means “stinky water” in the local native language. The name also graces the short stretch of water on which the  _ Lady Washington _ , my new home, is moored. The  _ Lady _ is a brig, a two masted square-rigged tall ship and a replica of the first American vessel to come to the Northwest Coast.

I arrived at the boat on December 24, after some 26 hours of meandering travel in my crewmate’s car. My crewmate’s unheated car. Through Oregon. In the fog……

So I’ll try to give a few impressions of my new life here. If they seem scattered, it is a mental reflection of sorts. Every day I have a little more energy to work, but I arrived very tired and am waiting for my head to clear.

It is cold here in Aberdeen. I live in a berth in the f’o’c’sle (forecastle), which is the traditional crew quarters on a sailing ship. There are 8 berths; I occupy starboard forward upper (all the way in the top front forwardmost spot). This guarantees I will thwack my head no less than 6 times a night until I learn there are beams right above my head! To get here one goes down a ladder, through a hatch. Yesterday I decorated….pictures of my special friends and family, my horse. One of many rituals to help realize that this is now home. Today we cleaned the f’o’c’sle. The entire floor area is now visible. Traditionally this will not last for long.

All of the boat is made of wood, except for metal fittings. The  _ Lady _ is as authentic as possible to a cargo vessel of the late 1700’s.

Some friends have asked me what it is I will be doing. I’ve smiled more than once since I got here at that question. A good synopsis of my time thus far would go something like this: Go shop at Top Foods, cook meals on a recalcitrant diesel stove/oven, wash dishes, climb into the rigging and dangle in my harness with the breeze blowing to see the sunset, make lanyards (lines of twine) for my marlinespike (universal sailor’s tool), carry half a ton of ropes and line onto the boat, scrape sand and paint the  _ Lady’ _ s rowboat, clean the heads and sink, help clean up an accidental spill of a gallon of Pine Sol in the main hold, go to Ace hardware for sets of screws, tour the Seaport and see the tools for boat and sailmaking and woodworking, help stow sailing materials in the cable tiers (little rat-hole storage area in the bow of the boat), put my belongings way, oil musical instruments, weave Turk’s heads (fancy ropework binding) onto cans of paint for handles, reorganize the galley stores, clean out the refrigerators, and survive a quiz marathon about every sail and line of standing rigging on the boat….

and it’s just the beginning!

But back to the cold. It is like camping here….at night we have to close the hatch to the f’o’c’s’le or we may as well be sleeping on deck. Now that we have a mostly full crew sleeping in there, it is comfortable all night. It also helped that we “borrowed” the space heater from the office and shoved it in one of the lower berths. In the morning there is ice on deck, and everyone runs from their berth to the main hold. The main hold contains Bertha, the stove. Even though the cook has to be up at about 6:30, it is far from a bad job…..there is Bertha. During the days it becomes warmer. I am acclimating pretty quickly. On the third morning I shocked my companions by running barefoot up the hatch. There are exacly 4 steps needed to get from the hatch to the main hold……this must be weighed against the cold of actually getting dressed in the crew quarters. So it seemed like the thing to do. And everyone liked the cow pajamas at breakfast….I am an entertaining cook in addition to my other crew contributions.

Cooking is a challenge. Bertha is fickle. Bertha has a broken thermometer. My second day, the streusel coffee cake was in there for 15 minutes out of the 50 when smoke was billowing out. Oops….carmelized coffee cake. I couldn’t understand what happened. But we figured out later in the day that 300 degrees on the thermometer was really 575 and then it all made sense. Bertha has two controls, as such. A dial, from 1-10, and a fan. For the rest there are the astrological charts. I have discovered that baking powder is a good thing. Biscuits. Rolls. Bread. Muffins. Coffee cake. More muffins. More biscuits. Crepes. The stores are challenging, too. A big bin, filled with all sorts of random canned goods is in the main hold. The refrigerator has some vegetables and leftovers. We have at the moment no freezer. The previous cook was a strict vegeterian. So the day we made orange muffins for breakfast we noticed 15 minutes before serving time that the orange had actually been a grapefruit and sure hope no one notices. Maybe it was even a pummelo….who knows.

Well it is time to turn in and tune out…..

I miss all of you.

Love

“The Bilge Rat”

 

#  **2) GOES BOOM**

I left off last a few hours before the new year. There are a lot of ways to note the passing of the hour, but nothing quite like what we do here. We fire cannons!!! So for us, being onboard at 11:56pm in a group of crewmates old and new, the time honored cry of “fire in the hole” rang out. Usually a couple of charges would have sufficed, but Captain Jake was overheard saying, “keep firing, it’s the millenium.”

The next day (it being a post-libation period), few crew were stirring. Just as well. I took the day off, to do errands. It was nice to get up late, as well as nothing particular to do. The only sensible thing to do at the end of the day was to go to bed early. That brings us to today.

Today is the first day since arriving here that I have felt physically really good. It was snowing when we stumbled out of the f’o’c’sle this morning. Today’s big project was a major clean up of the f’o’c’sle. That meant, clean the bilges below the sole (floor) with salt water, take everything off the floor (and there’s a whole lot of everything including the ladder), and scrub everything that is not a personal possession. However in the middle of this, I got to help do “washdown”. Washdown involves using a 500 gallon per minute fire hose to blast everything with salt water. It occured to me that I must be getting used to the cold, when I was hosing everything down in the snow, barefoot, and thinking it was all very funny. I finished just in time for it to start hailing. We had quite the meteorologically varied day here in Aberdeen. Oh yeah, when it wasn’t snowing or hailing it was raining.

It was good timing to have done so much cleaning since today was the changing of the guard. Some long standing crew members departed today, and the majority of the crew that will be travelling south arrived. It was a very positive experience, to see enthusiastic faces eager to work. It breaks the long weeks and months of just a few crew members struggling to do too much work with little or no help. There are a lot of tasks to accomplish, but a new hopefulness seems to have settled on the boat.

And tomorrow I have to cook all day, and those of you who know me, know what I think of getting up at 5:30am. I’m making pear dumplings in case anybody is curious……

  
  


#  **3) SHIP’S ARTICLES**

Hello,

This week all new crew signed the ship’s articles. There was a flurry of activity one moment and everyone was supposed to go to the aft cabin to sign these mysterious papers that were new on board. Okay….the standing joke is that one should sign them without reading them. Partially because they are not strictly adhered to….but some of the items do matter. The articles themselves are in effect the sailor’s binding agreement to the vessel. They state THE RULES, expected conduct, etc. From a symbolic viewpoint I found them interesting. One can show up on board and work, somewhat secure in the back of one’s mind that if life here becomes ridiculous one can just walk away for a nice extended break at Wal-Mart….but not so once the papers are signed. It is the realization that one has entered a centuries old circumstance of sailors bound to a vessel. Want to leave the boat? Not without permission. Just got an order, like furling the topgallant sail in the cold rain, and you don’t want to carry it out? Too bad. Although, some elements are taken worth a grain of salt. “No profanity on board the vessel”………..no, there’s no *&^*)&^)*&^ profanity aboard this (&(*&^)*& boat. Well anyway….

******

Recent days have become busy. Lots and lots of maintenance work occurring. In a chance to redeem myself from the previous week, I tarred a goodly portion of the foremast shrouds. This time around it went much better. I didn’t glob the tar on. And as I spend more time aloft, I become much more comfortable. A certain mentality takes over, I wonder if it is the same as for highwire artists. Your harness is there to catch you if you should fall…..but don’t fall. Move as though there is no harness, work with the rigging in safety and not against it. Certain lines are stable and anchored, others are designed to move and do not offer reliable security as a hand or foothold. Learn the difference and pay attention. But, be creative. Find ways to make the human body dangle around lines and stays (huge woven pieces of ropework that support the masts) so as to reach into odd corners where work needs to be done. The boat is a Jungle Gym, have fun. Working aloft is one of the most rewarding experiences the boat has to offer. The view is spectacular, even from the lower platforms. The air is clear, and there is a sense of having achieved a little personal space from one’s crewmates on board the crowded lower areas. It is a place to work in a meditative state of mind.

******

I have worked a great deal as cook since coming aboard. We now have a crew of about 10-13 on a given day. And, I’ve been assigned as ship’s provisioner, She Who Goes Shopping For Food as well. The boat is in a financial state of near crisis right now. The repairs to the transom have been expensive, and every day not spent in California is a day of lost income for our season. So the work is “budget”. For the smallest items to be purchased the crew consults carefully to determine how necessary the spending is. I’m proud to be spending something like $4 per person per day on food, which is drastically less than the allotted $7.50 that would be usual. I am happily cooking away with all sorts of grains. Fresh vegetables are slowly being added but we have an interesting refrigeration problem. The  _ Lady _ has no working freezer. But the refrigerator won’t regulate itself and freezes what is put into it. I’m not sure where that leaves us….

we defrosted the refrigerator a few days ago, and so far the problem is puzzling our engineer. Nothing is uglier than frozen celery that was supposed to be available for lunch salad…..

******

Lastly I have begun to enter an awareness of the difficulty of life as a sailor. This work is as unlike an 8-5 job as is possible to have. We work the sun up and down, and the work is really never done. But everyone here is driven by a common purpose, which it to care for the vessel we love. We’re not crazy; it is a philosophy born from a simple fact: if the boat isn’t cared for we might have a big problem on our hands. So the love and respect we have for the  _ Lady _ is a reflection of taking care of ourselves, individually and collectively. At regular jobs there are lunch times and break times, which don’t really happen here. There is a momentum to each day that the crew decides upon as a unit; weather, the tasks to be done, everyone’s health; all things play upon how much is done on a given day. But the flurry to be able to leave Aberdeen doesn’t abate, we all want to be able to leave this dock we have been tied to for so long and head out into the Pacific.

So free time basically starts after dinner, which is over at about 7pm. It is a time of day to crowd phone calls, going to a movie or out for ice cream, sleep, relaxation, socializing. And then the next day begins anew…reveille comes early.

Fair winds

 

#  **4) WHATEVER**

I used to think I knew what a hard day at work was. I didn’t know nuthin’. The pace of the work has been picking up onboard, and the difficulty level of the jobs has increased greatly because of the weather conditions. Some days ago, the snow, rain and hail set in and never really stopped. Many of the tasks that need completing are tedious ones up in the rigging, where you are unsheltered from wind and whatever is falling out of the sky at the moment. Some of the crew are working on parcelling (canvas and tar wrapping of standing rigging to prevent chafing). It is just no fun to be sitting sixty feet in the air with the temperature around thirty-three degrees, with wind, snow or rain, trying to work with materials and chemicals bare handed and not even be able to move your body into a comfortable position. Or move your body at all for that matter. We shifted our work day to an earlier breakfast so that we can take advantage of every minute of daylight.

I am finding that it takes a tremendous amount of inner resolve to do this kind of work and pretend one is enjoying it. Whatever it is, you have to twist your brain around into deciding that you really, actually want to do this. In the rain and snow. With a wind. Wrapped in ten layers of clothing. We all make jokes about the work conditions; everyone is suffering equally but nobody really admits it. It creates a healthy competition that allows one to get through the day. Did I mention there were no coffee breaks, no newspapers, and that we work eleven hour days?

The camaraderie is incredible to experience. The work and the cold are brutal. There is a lot to enjoy, believe it or not. The crew, even though we have only been together about a week and a half, has become family. Perhaps it is the shared goal of the work, perhaps it is the living in close quarters and the mutual tolerance required for such circumstances to be successful, but either way, I find myself becoming very close to and very fond of my fellow shipmates. This is something that will no doubt increase in the weeks ahead.

A few nights ago beginning a little bit before sundown we had our first sail drill. The  _ Lady Washington _ has the ropes which move her sails and yards and other miscellany attached to what are called belaying pins; these pins are found on various rails distributed around the vessel. In order to be an effective sailor, one has to know the function of each of them. Blindfolded. Needless to say just about nobody on board is in possession of such expertise at the moment. So the drills are designed to begin to familiarize ourselves with the necessary motions of sailing the boat. Most of the focus is on those who have not previously sailed, or have little sailing experience. My few days onboard the topsail ketch  _ Hawaiian Chiefain _ gave me some readiness for this kind of work. However, everything about the  _ Lady _ is bigger, heavier and more complex. Our sail drill was conducted for the most part, at night, in the rain. The tar on our rigging still has not dried, every time one has to go aloft, one literally has to rip one’s hands back off the shrouds. They seem to be covered with mostly, though not all dried, glue. It is becoming a joke that one couldn’t possibly fall, because isn’t this how fly paper works……

Working with a boat’s sails is quite unlike anything one could do on land. You climb up there, slide out on a slippery foot rope (what you stand on) most of the weight of your body draped over the yard, balancing yourself at your waist or hips, clipped into a jack stay (iron bar running the length of the yards) hoping your harness line isn’t going to take out your crewmate should you slip, trying to deal with the equivalent of five or six water-logged king size comforters. “Deal with” means binding up all that cloth into a roll neatly and tying it back down against the yard. In order to gain the leverage to do this we work together using phrases from rhythmic work songs so that we all hoist at the same time. The smaller sails may be furled by one or two people, they only weigh about 100 pounds. The larger ones take four to six, weighing 150 to 200 pounds dry, and hundreds more wet. As you might guess, we are throwing our body weight back while our hands gripped into the sails. You simply forget that you are high in the air or the work would never get done. Our harnesses, and the fact that furling sail has been done this way for hundreds of years, make the job a lot less intimidating. It makes one think about the days before sailors wore harnesses, before there were foot ropes, and the ships were two and three times the mast height of the  _ Lady _ .

Perhaps everyone has wondered as to the cast of characters that comprise the crew. I may as well say a few words about everybody, since I’m sure they will all appear throughout my tales. I’ve already mentioned Captain Jake, our Captain and shipwright. I’m guessing he’s in his mid-forties. He is passionate about sailing and football, and seems to be a just about endless repository of knowledge for all things nautical. He is a patient person, although the frustrating setbacks occurring as to the  _ Lady _ ’s repairs have taken their toll. Next in line for description should be the first mate, the Captain’s “right arm.” However nobody is quite sure as to who is the first mate at this point. For the sake of discussion we will give the position to “Evil” Ryan. (And yes there is a “Good” Ryan as well.) Evil, as we call him, is a young man who is pretty much a dead ringer for Errol Flynn, except with dark hair. He is known and loved by all, and has been with the  _ Lady _ many times for in the past year. He is not currently living on board because he is busy trying to pass tests that will give him the correct licenses to serve as first mate. Next is our Bo’sun, Will. Will is from the UK and has to be about one of the funniest people I have ever met in my life. He can make me laugh first thing in the morning. Before coffee. We have all been learning a great deal about British English, although not the sort that you would want to share with your children. Next is Ben our engineer. Recently from the revenue cutter  _ Californian _ , Ben humorously describes himself as the “busybody” of the boat. In reality he is a hard, focused worker who has put an incredible amount of effort since his arrival into fixing the not inconsiderable amount of things around here that need fixing. Next comes Abbe our purser; also from the  _ Californian _ . She is quiet, and is also the person who has been doing most of the aforementioned job of parcelling. I don’t know how she can stand the cold. Lastly from the  _ Californian _ is Dylan, the steward. Dylan is a big man with a deep voice which is beautiful to hear; he is frequently heard singing shanties (sea songs) while working. Our cook is Daniel. Daniel is kind of a long story, but suffice to say he has worked on the  _ Lady _ before brings sailing and carpentry experience, and has certainly made our little home in the fo’csle habitable due to Felix Unger-like habits. Next is Jessup. Jessup has been on board throughout the dreary months of maintenance when he was one of only two or three crew, and for a time was even on board by himself. Many of the tedious repairs that are being completed now are thanks to his work over the months. Jessup is my best friend on board, and has in many ways made it possible for me to be on the  _ Lady _ . Robin is also a long time  _ Lady Washington _ crew member. Introspective and possessed of a lot of creativity, Robin has done so many jobs on board, it is hard to count. She can usually be found doing solitary work, high in the rig. Lastly, Krista is very cute and bubbly, she always has a smile no matter how strange or difficult the task at hand. A few days ago I watched her hang over the side of the boat all day grinding rust off the chain plates (Counter balances to the shrouds (things that hold the mast in place)), it was freezing and there was no real place to sit or stand (unless you could stand on the water) and I never heard one complaint. There will also be Leslie who is not here yet; she is working aboard another vessel at the moment.

So that’s all for now, it is getting late, and I hope everyone of you is contemplating the wonderful device known as a heater… I sure am!!! If I ever have one again, I will never take if for granted.

 

#  **5) THE SAILMAKER’S APPRENTICE**

Hello everyone, sorry this has taken so long. We have been experiencing an “internet failure” here at the boat office. That can encompass everything from the office guy mucking up the software to the power failing to the computer. And to be politic, I’ll leave the actual reasons to the imagination……..

In the past many days I have taken a departure from the usual maintenance occuring on the  _ Lady _ and have entered the sail loft. Sailmaking is another arcane, complex body of expertise in the world of tall ships. I was glad to have an introduction, and enjoyed this so much I am hoping to find a way to pursue more learning at a later time. The project was the spare fore topsail. The  _ Lady _ should ideally have a complete set of spare sails, especially given the weather we are likely to encounter as we sail the coast in winter. We are in possession of some spare sails, but they were in drastic disrepair. A sail isn’t what I always envisioned it to be–a huge square piece of cloth. It is comprised of panel after panel of fabric, joined in an exacting manner. And that is just part of it–there are grommets and cringles and clews and skins and reef points and bolt ropes and a host of little details to cope with. Each part must be sewn on, joined on in a particular way. In a perfect world there would be a sewing machine to do this with, instead of the handwork we did. Ironically we have a huge, monstrous Singer that has an engine (I say ENGINE and not “motor” for a reason) so powerful it is too much for our particular sails. I watched the needle on this machine rip 9 layer heavy canvas to shreds on the lightest setting. Oh well. It’s a little ironic I ended up in the sail loft, all who are close to me know I can’t sew even the simplest item. The materials are the same as “normal” sewing yet different. The needle is HUGE. Rig knives and pliers take out old seams and separate the sail itself from ropes and lines that are worn out. The thimble is a device that one wears across the hand, called a sailmaker’s palm. True to the way things usually are, the Lady currently has only one sailmaker’s palm. For a left-handed person. Go figure. And midway through this project we ran out of sail thread. Go figure again.

Well anyway the sail was completed today, after something like 2 weeks of work by 2 people. I’d like to work on one more sail, just to imprint what I learned. It’s a mixed wish….if I get my wish, it will be because something happened to a sail in transit. Just try working on a 30 x 50 foot piece of Dacron on a 112 foot boat….yeeeeech.

“Finishing” is what is going on right now. All projects that were begun, are being completed. The transom is coming together, everything but the windows and the decorative work is complete. I was working this morning sea-finning the bulwarks (sides of the boat). Sea fin is a teak oil, and in my personal opinion is so much better for a wood preservative/finish in the presence of water I don’t know why anyone bothers with varnish. Yesterday we set the 2 square sails on our mainmast, to see that the gear all worked. It worked…after we fixed the problems. I’ll add in that after a month on board, I achieved a personal goal in the rig. I can finally climb it correctly. I’ve always had problems with the section to be climbed known as the futtock shrouds; the part that one basically has to climb while hanging a bit upside down. The day finally came when I realized my upper body had gotten really strong and I was going about it the hard way. Things on the boat are like that. No one will ever push someone else to be unsafe or hurry; yet, a time comes when it is easier and in fact safer to perform a task in a way that formerly seemed like sheer lunacy.

Next comes sliding down the backstays.

Part of yesterday was furling the sails we had set. I hadn’t yet put the main topgallant away, so I gave that a try. I was happy to discover that the footropes are sized for a person like me. As I do more furling I hope to avoid the incredible backache that I seem to get from dangling over the yard to pull the sail back up into its little wrap. A lot of sailing is like riding horses. Yes, the boat is an inanimate object–or so it would like you to think. One has to decide to assert one’s will against the boat. Horse. Whatever. “You WILL furl, you (^&()*&*(& sail, and if you think tangling your gasket is going to help you you have another *&^&*^*^ thing coming…..” On a good day, the sailor wins.

Oops, there is no &*(^(&*^*( profanity on board the boat. Sorry about that.

Today the boat won, a little. Our bo’sun Will tried to go up out of the forecastle with the hatch shut, and has quite the beautiful crescent moon dent on his forehead. We seem to be stocking up on ice bags these days.

And, the crew….I’ve wanted for some time to digress into the lives of sailors. Everything you’ve heard–is true. Some sailors live the stereotype more than others, but it’s all true. I’d wondered if living in modern times would alter the fundamental nature of The Sailor, but really, it doesn’t. The work is hard. Rugged people have the easiest time. Some drink a little, others a lot. (But never on the boat. It’s a dry boat. No, nobody EVER drinks on the boat. Here it is, official and in print.) Either way you still have to work in the morning. Some people smoke, but only on deck. This crew is mostly a nonsmoking crew. The real advantage to being a smoker is that you stand a better chance of being ship’s gunner during battle sails. Personally I find it a bit discriminatory that the smokers get to fire the cannons more often…..

And relationships. Sailors don’t often get married. And even when they do, the relationships rarely stay monogamous. “Liberal” is a good term to describe boat life. Any form of conceivable relationship is not frowned on. If the people in the relationship are happy with the situation, then it is fine.

Constant joking, kept within the comfort level of those present, is encouraged and a source of a lot of humor. Some people are uninhibited and crazy, others self-conscious and timid. Everyone is accepted and liked for who they are. While the lack of traditional standards may be frowned on by those on shore, it isn’t hard to see why the liberality occurs. Limited opportunity for recreation, close (nay, inescapable) companionship with the same people for months at a time, 10 people jammed into a 14′ x 20’space…it’s in the end all about mutual tolerance and respect for others. Don’t judge others, but be considerate. If you don’t like something, speak up–politely. A boat may not be the best place to be, if one has strong likes and dislikes.

It was interesting to witness the “crew bonding” time on the Lady. The boat started out with one crew couple and now there are five. One crew member called this the “Boat falling in love” period. And, the boat can fall out of love too. Entire crews have vanished into thin air when the interpersonal dynamics on board have gone sour. It is an itinerant life. If one forms a relationship, it is really best not to count on anyone altering one’s life goals to continue existing as a couple. In fact, it can be quite unwise. Some couples can try to continue on to new boats together, but it is difficult. New boat, maybe a new relationship. Maybe not. Whatever….sailors sail.

And communication. On boats people write LETTERS. Remember those things, before e-mail and faxes and cell phones? I’ve never seen so many letters in my life go back and forth. And packages. Watch a sailor’s eyes light up at the box of cookies from mom or the stack of pictures sent from a former crewmate. I got some cookies recently, that was a great thing. If anyone wants to send our poor, poor crew cookies the address is:

Poor Crewmember

Brig Lady Washington

P.O. Box 2019

Aberdeen, WA

98520

Yes we can get stuff here even after we sail, there are mail deliveries…..eventually.

Also, I want to thank everyone who has sent stuff or written or been home for a phone call or whatever. Hearing from my friends and family has been wonderful. If I haven’t replied, believe me, I wanted to. THANK YOU!!

And….lots of people are asking when we sail…..we are HOPING to in about 11 days.

When the drawbridge goes up and we are motoring down the Chehalis, there are going to be about 14 ecstatic people on board whooping and hollering. I can’t WAIT.

Life will change then completely, we will be going to the watch life. 4 hour watches, 4 hours on 8 hours off for the weeks it takes us to get where we are going. It will be a whole other set of challenges and experiences (the deep sea fishing gear is getting set up on the main gaff…..fresh fish oh please oh please), but it’s one we’ve all worked very hard for.

Now it is time for me to continue enjoying a rare thing, our “crew morale day”. We are holed up in Daniel’s (our cook) parents’ house in Seattle. TV, VCR, shower, hot tub…..nirvana.

 

#  **6) WRAPPING UP**

Greetings to all!

This may be the last (or near to it) entry I am able to make personally before the  _ Lady _ sets sail. We have had a loss of telephone and internet access at the seaport office so that makes life a little harder.

Life has changed substantially since I last wrote. After our fun day off as a crew, we had a big meeting in the main hold back on the boat, with the captain. (But I will intersperse, that on the way home from Seattle we passed the captain in his car on the freeway. The whole crew waved at him out the windows and when we finally caught his attention I don’t think I’ve ever seen him laugh so hard….)

We talked about our work related problems, not the least of which was the loss of one of the shipwrights. So we decided that from here on out we are all going into overtime, working into the evenings. Our work has become focused more than ever. For the most part everyone is working on either the transom or the engine room. In just 2 days the transom has been sanded, primed, and the painting has begun. I worked 2 days in the aft cabin on the interior parts of the construction, and for the first time have been able to appreciate the work of the shipwrights. The back of the boat is a marvel of woodworking. The pieces are huge and heavy and so exactingly fitted one can’t help but admire the skills involved.

We plan to sail in 8 days, and there is still so much to do.

Yesterday I ended up cooking breakfast. Cinnamon rolls. I got up at 5:45 and took my time. We’ve been listening to a lot of Gypsy Kings music on board. Some of the crew is quite sick of it so I was able to have the music all to myself without annoying anyone else. I don’t understand a lot of Spanish but who cares, it is great music. I think it is the music I will associate with my time here more than any other. And, it was one of those breathtaking sunrises that is every color of the rainbow. The sight of the masts and rigging against the sky during different times of the day is already something I am in love with. Standing in my pajamas, all alone on deck in the cold wind and just watching the sun come up….it makes me wonder who I am and where did Deborah go.

Well time to go……..

until the next report!!

Fair winds

 

#  **7) THE LAZARETTE**

(The internet is back!! Yayy!!)

Lazarettes are one of those odd places on ships. They are storage lockers that one accesses through a hatch. In the aft cabin one finds the lazarette, in my experience. I spent a lot of today working in ours and decided that it is better called the Oubliette (oubliette is a word everyone should know. go look it up in the dictionary. then insult someplace you don’t like. “that place is an oubliette!!”). Lately everything is scrape, sand, prime and paint. We have been in the process of installing an airtight bulkhead in between the engineering room and the aft cabin. It is all part of our fire suppression system: if the engine room catches on fire, the compartment can be flooded with carbon dioxide. So now there is a beautifully painted bulkhead, deep in the belly of the vessel, where just about nobody will ever see it. Okay, maybe the Coast Guard will take a peek.

Last night we bent on the last plank of the transom. This is a process to behold. We have a big steam box set up on the dock, and the plank goes inside of it. Much fuming and steaming later, and usually just a little after dinnertime, the whole crew goes into action. 4 or 5 people march the steaming hot plank down to the boat, where the rest of the crew stands waiting. The heated wood smells wonderful. Under direction from the shipwrights, the board bends as we apply pressure and is clamped against the transom. It stays in position until it cools. Later on the shipwrights carve it into the right shape and size and bolt it on. Hard to believe, the final stages of the repairs are at hand. Structures that didn’t exist when I arrived 5 weeks ago are now painted and finished.

Everyone’s mood seems to have taken a turn for the better as well. The crew regains its cheerfulness a little more every day, as the prospect of being out of the everlasting maintenance period draws near.

We have a new crewmember, Hal. Hal is a longtime crewmember who is retired. He is with us for about a month. We made room for him in our little living quarters, since no one should have to sleep in the main hold. The berths in the main hold are not really designed to accommodate the human body above the age of 12. Of course, it could be a saner choice to stay there. The fo’csle now has 10 people in a space designed for 8. 6 men, 4 women. 1 trash can, 1 hatch, 2 benches, 1 space heater. 4 overhead lights. And most importantly, a lot of laughter.

I have with some amusement watched some things about me change since I’ve come here. The top of the list has to be my hands. Today they are sporting 2 colors of paint, tar, and various sanded-powdery globby bits of stuff. Fingernails are in there somewhere. I could spend an hour trying to clean them every night, only to reverse the progress within the first 5 minutes of work tomorrow, or I can just stop looking. I figure, it likely inhibits all bacterial growth and is really much better this way.

Mostly I find myself wanting more free time. The lack of free time is getting to be very difficult to continue to deal with. Working about 12 hours, 7 days a week, with the option to take a day off a week, is not the best schedule for relaxing. This will change as soon as we get out on the water, the work will drop to 8 hours a day exactly, barring crises that require all hands on deck. Experienced crew tell me that for the first 4 or 5 days of ocean sailing, I will spend 8 hours on watch, 0.5 eating, and 15.5 dead asleep in my berth. After that, there is some spare time. I find myself wanting to draw. I see all sorts of little details around the boat that just beg to be sketched, but at night when there is time, there’s no light. I spend as much time as I can standing on the ladder into the fo’csle looking up at the rigging. At night it becomes a vast gray spider web , perfectly symmetrical against the stars.

And, the everlasting Learn Irish project is getting going. Jessup and I picked a language; we both like foreign languages. So Irish won. So far I know the word for “carrot”. Don’t ask me why. I’ve learned there aren’t always explanations….

Which reminds me. I have learned two valuable bits of wisdom from fellow crew:

1) Smile and nod

2) If you weren’t doing this, you’d be doing something else

They are the deeper understanding of life under a first mate and bo’sun. Someone always has work for you to do. Forget even thinking about slacking off. You will be followed, hunted down. Not so much because they suspect you of slacking or are looking for slackers to persecute, but because they are desperate for a spare body to do a chore (“are you done with the _________ yet??”). So no matter how much you hate painting priming sanding scraping tarring caulking washing seafinning serving furling cutting sewing seizing splicing sailmaking cooking climbing, the next job will likely be no better. May as well stay with the one you have……..smile and nod.

Today I only hit my head about 3 times. So far. (knock on wood) This is doubtless another reason sailors are addle-brained. Sheer amount of blows to the head. The most dangerous place on board is my berth, I’m convinced of it. Try to change clothes….smack! Try to get into berth…smack! Sit up too fast….smack! I can’t wait for rough seas. Maybe I’ll sleep under the mattress and get it over with.

In case anyone has wondered how we don’t get slung onto the floor in rough seas (I wondered), there are devices called lee cloths. Sort of like a sailor’s version of the rail on the hospital bed so you can’t fall out. We’ll see how well they work.

I’m looking forward to the transit for another reason too….it will be an excuse to clean out the berth. Clipboards. Letters. Books, clothes, stereos, art stuff, 4 foot long catfish pillow, pictures, shelving….who really knows what is there anymore. No time to keep things orderly.

Well time to go for tonight, I miss you all!

Fair winds

 

#  **8) YELLOW HELL**

I have a friend, who likes yellow. He drove a Ford station wagon and a Ford truck, both painted “Federal yellow.” It’s that sick color of yellow that is so cheerful that if looked at long enough, it brings on a sort of mental derangement. I know this because I have been to the land of Yellow and back. I had way, way too much time to think about “yellow” as a concept. I will proudly say for years to come that I was the one who painted those pretty twirly wooden decorations that go on the stern of the  _ Lady _ (called “baroque fashion pieces” for the technically minded).

I always wondered why the boat was painted those circus colors. Federal yellow, bright red, bright blue. It was to make the vessel look appealing to the natives back in days of yore. Today it is just to torment the crew. It wouldn’t be bad if the yellow paint acted like paint. It seems to follow some basic rules. 1) Thou shalt not dry 2) If thou driest, thou shalt shrivel. 3) Thou shalt not sand nicely between coats but thou shalt strip off in great rubbery globs. 4) Thou shalt adhere to every surface excepting those belonging to the vessel.

I had a glorious case of artificial jaundice for 4 days. There were yellow paint strips all over the trailer, dock, boat, everywhere.

I will see the yellow is my dreams. And, in those spare moments, I will always wonder what was wrong with my friend and couldn’t he have painted his vehicles blue like everyone else.

So the trasnom is on, the transom has caulked seams and sea fin and paint. And pretty much, I can stop talking about the transom and move onto other topics from here on out. It seems odd but in less than 5 days we will no longer be a construction crew but be sailors.

The anticipation is building. So are the seasickness jokes. The whole thing is a combination of curiosity, excitement, dread, adventure, tiredness, and relief. Just to be out of Aberdeen!! Just to be out in 20 foot seas…..oh look, that wave went halfway up the lower shrouds……what’s for lunch??

Our target departure date is now Monday; we have our final Coast Guard inspection then. It may be an underway one. Sometime between then and now the boat is going to be readied for sea (lash everything down and stow it), the provisions come on board, the sailors get their act together and fight over the laundry machine and shower (oh yeah, one of our hot water heaters went out just to help life be more comfortable), we clean up after ourselves, have some training drills for sailing and emergency procedures, make sure the engine works well…and go.

Some lovely person donated to us about 800 gallons of diesel fuel…..thank you thank you.

It is late, time to go sleep. The work days will soon be less than 12 hours long. Oh, I almost forgot. I brightened my mood considerably by going to Sears and purchasing an industrial utility scraper with 6 interchangeable blades (thanks mom and dad!!). I am the envy of the boat. I am sent in to scrape things that no other scraper can scrape. I even enjoy scraping now that I have….the right tool for the right job. My advice for anyone going to work on a vessel like this is, bring all your tools. Then hide them so nobody knows what you can really do. Save the day by procuring your odd tool at just the right moment. It does wonders for crew morale….then again, those ingrates did steal the last of my soda when I wasn’t looking….

Thanks again to all who have written or sent encouragement. This really probably will be the last time I type for myself….three cheers to Robert, who will kindly manage to keep this mailing list working. We hope to be in Morro Bay by Feb. 24th…

Love to you all

 

#  **9) TOMORROW**

It’s late, the crew is fried. This is really, really, the last note. We leave tomorrow to sail to Westport, and after that do who knows what until we finally cross the bar and go to the ocean.

Right now I’m wishing I’d paid a little more attention to all the meteorology I’ve been exposed to over the years, as the crew huddled around the computer trying to decipher the NOAA weather charts. Well…we all concluded, time over the rail will be in order.

Only among sailors is this something looked forward to. I still haven’t figured them out and I’m supposed to be one of them. It seems to creep on with time….

Today was spent packing the boat. I thought packing for vacation was bad….this is so much worse. The suitcase is a 9 foot drop into a hole and the contents will not ever fit. And, the clothing weighs thirty pounds apiece. Ugh.

We also all purchased our crew uniforms today…our spiffy new t-shirts with black Carharrt trousers. We looked so clean and unrecognizable. There were visitors to the  _ Lady _ , so we all dressed up for the occasion. 12 lost souls milling around, afraid to touch anything lest they get dirty. It was really quite funny. We took group photos in front of our new transom, minus the scaffolding which has been there for 5 months now.

Time to hit the rack…….love to you all!

Fair winds

 

#  **10) THE OCEAN TRANSIT**

This goes back in time some weeks….the transit turned out to be the longest the  _ Lady Washington _ has ever been continuously at sea. We were 175 miles out from land as we sailed and motored south. Prior to this I had been on the ocean for 6 hours in my entire life.

On Sunday (Feb. 13) morning we woke up to another day of maintenance. Crew were packing the boat somewhat frantically. I was trying to clean and store items from our trailer; particularly the 30 or so paint brushes that had been used for days on end to paint the  _ Lady _ inside and out. Somewhere in there, Ryan told me “we’re leaving in one hour.” Oh. For whatever reason, I was not mentally ready to go; it seemed like one of those “this is not happening” episodes. There had been much talk of a day off, and since myself and everyone else was exhausted, it just seemed likely that we’d have a little downtime. Nope.

In a blur the engine was started, mooring lines were off, and we were off the Wishkah. Our shipwright Scotty saw us off. Scotty made us all feel great about our success in being able to leave Aberdeen. As we left he yelled that if ever he had a problem like this to deal with again, he hoped he had a crew of square rig sailors to help him work. Scotty made up a part of daily life in Aberdeen and we all miss him. As soon as we entered the Chehalis River we had our first sail commands, to set both main and fore top and topgallant sails, and our fore topmast staysail. For so long the crew has waited to hear that; we all flew up the shrouds. To be up on the top platform, actually underway, was so entrancing that nobody really wanted to get out of the rigging. But, since the sails can’t be fully set with people aloft….we went back on deck. We loaded our cannon, and there was no better sight than the drawbridge raising for us. The guns fired as we exited under the bridge; our way of saying goodbye. We travelled to Westport mostly under sail. The swells were significant even on the river, even with the bar another half hour or more away. We docked just when we were all starting to get a bit queasy. The first of many times, someone had to splat. When no one appears on the dock to greet us, someone has to get to the dock to set the mooring lines on the cleats. Splatting involves donning a life vest, taking hold of a line coming off the end of the fore course yard, and swinging off the boat Tarzan style onto the dock as soon as one feels one will make it to the other side. This splat was at night, on a narrow dock, absolutely coated in slippery bird droppings, and the heroic sailor got quite a scraped knee.

The next day, 2/14, we had a Coast Guard inspection — the final one. We went over drills (man overboard, fire and abandon ship). Every sailor has an assignment in the event of a drill or emergency, and must know what to do should the ship’s bell sound the alarm. We also had a roll call assignment, so that we could quickly recite numbers 1-15 should there be a doubt as to anyone not being on board. I was number 13, I liked that. We also learned who would have what watches, and after we passed our inspection we were going to leave. So at about noon we headed to sea. I felt more afraid then than I had at any time previous. Going out to sea in February on a 112 foot brig was seeming like a rollercoaster ride does when the ride has already begun and second thoughts are abounding. I had to have a long talk with myself, and deal with fear. There are a lot of things to be afraid of on a ship, if I let myself. The unknown and the things one has not yet achieved usually seem the worst. So having finished my internal pep talk with myself, I felt a lot better. All hands were to stand on deck until 4 pm, and then the watches began. “A” watch is Evil, Krista, David and Leslie (12 – 4 am/pm). “B” watch is Jessup, Abbe, Ben and Hal (4 – 8 am/pm) and “C” (8 – 12 am/pm) is myself, Robin, Dylan and Will. Will, Ben and Ryan are the watch leaders. As time went one, we took on nicknames. “A” was Sasquatch, “B” Baywatch, and “C” Dental Hygiene Watch. (We flossed our way south!)

Daniel the cook, Captain Jake and our passenger Geoff are not assigned a watch. The watches are very pleasant. We have had good seas, nothing higher than 10 feet. We started out under motor only, heading SW @ 230 degrees. We had a speed of only 3- 5 knots, and, with no sail set this boat rolls and rolls and rolls. Staying upright has been quite a task.

On the watches themselves are three duties: boat check, bow watch, and helm. Later on stern watch was added as a fourth thing to do. Boat check consists of checking all the lines, verifying our lights at nighttime, inspecting bilges for water levels, etc. Bow watch is a slight misnomer, since all 360 degrees need to be watched. This is why stern watch was later added, for better lookout ability. Certainly for objects we might be too near to, but also to lookout for other vessels. It would take about six minutes for a deep draft ship to be on top of us (as a wooden vessel we show up poorly on radar). The helm is very challenging. It involves keeping the boat on course with the use of a tiller. The tiller is a large piece of purple heart wood, with a block and tackle system and a handbrake. Our rudder weighs about 1400 lbs. It takes a lot of concentration to steer a course and a lot of shoving the tiller around.

For awhile I’ve had some general dread of climbing into the rig while out at sea. I have good reason to be afraid of falling 70 feet, it’s not hard to do. I’ve gone up twice in the past two days, and am still trying to get used to it. It feels like sitting on a flagpole in the wind as the ship rolls and pitches.

2/19, It’s 2:30 pm, an hour and a half before my watch. Every 3rd day we have “dog watches” which are 2 hours long. They serve to rotate the groups of crew into different time slots. I see the sun and moon rise and set on the 4-8 watch. It doesn’t really matter what watch one has. Eat sleep and watch is the routine. Right now the sun is out,and the cobalt sea just undulates. I was sleeping on the assorted hatches but I’m tired of that now. I have become very close to my watchmates. Safe to say, we must be the most obnoxious watch to anyone trying to sleep. Dylan is the  _ Lady _ ’s shantyman, and the rest of us like to be silly, so there has been no lack of singing and joking. We eat saltines and chocolate and oranges, and find things to do to stay awake. Will has taught me so many sailing tricks that I don’t know what I’d do without. Out of everyone on board, Will has sailed around Cape Horn, and is as tough as nails as a sailor.

Our weather has been wonderful so far. While I write we are just south of Fort Bragg, California. Yesterday was memorable for me in that I got over myself. I feel comfortable now going aloft on the ocean, which for me is a big accomplishment. One of the best things about the learning environment on board is the encouragement and reinforcement I’ve been given to test and explore but not exceed my limits. The people here have all overcome the same fears and trepidations, and pass on the sense that with time and patience difficult tasks become easy.

Today we are motoring but 24 hours ago the Lady was under full sail. No, EXTRA full sail. We set every piece of canvas we have, and additionally rigged up a “water-sail” and a “lower main staysail”. The latter was rapidly re-named “the funks’l” because it is a funky looking excuse for a sail.

Captain Jake showed me the workings of the sextant after lunch. I have a little more admiration for the minds who invented the device and refined its use. It’s a simple tool to measure with, but the variables involved in using the information to obtain an accurate position are somewhat daunting. As in, math, and lots of it.

This is the sixth day of our transit. We’ve been very limited as to freshwater usage. That means, no showers. Or so we thought. Someone had the bright idea to turn the firehose on so that we could all have a saltwater shower on deck. With “lemon-scented Joy.” (There are few soaps that will lather in salt water.) I had my doubts as to the sanity of the idea, but it served the purpose rather well. It’s almost too bad no one videotaped the event because it ranked pretty high on the ridiculousness scale. And a good time was had by all, as much as is possible when getting doused by 50 degree water. But to feel clean was worth the cold.

Many people have asked me why I wanted to have this experience of “life as a sailor.” There can be a lot of answers to that question. Wondering what life was like as a square-rig deckhand. Wanting to be somewhere to see 360 degrees of un-interrupted horizon. Wanting to see the stars at night. Wanting to listen to the sound of the boat under full sail. Needing a change of job scenery for awhile. Those are all true. But the real answer is more abstract; it is about security. There is a quote floating around on board by Sterling Hayden, in which he writes of how most people feel compelled to amass security for themselves as they go through life. Saving money, having a house, possessions. And that somewhere along the line it can happen that instead of possessions giving security, they merely control. One day a person is rich in material surroundings, but poor in spirit. I gave myself many reasons why I couldn’t take a period of my life to go sailing. I realized, for me, that I was talking myself out of living life in a full sense. I’ve come to believe that learning and growing are vital to life, and form time to time that growth must come from setting aside the familiar and the comfortable. It was very, very hard to come here, and I know that plenty of challenges are still to come. But I also know that I feel quite alive here, and will never doubt that it was worth the journey.

2/20 Sailors have a superstitious obsession with knocking on wood. Statements such as “the weather has been great so far” bring with them an unspoken tempting of the fates; one must knock on wood to dispel the evil that may befall one. Utter silliness….until one’s life is made or broken by things like the weather and forces of nature. For example yesterday I wrote about azure skies and cobalt seas….and today, with no knocking on wood, the weather has turned dismal and the ocean more violent. We are experiencing 20 foot chop, which makes for violent random motions on the part of the vessel. “Chop” is something different than “swells”. I decided that swells were a good thing. The boat moves constantly. It either rolls or pitches or…….just one thing at a time. But this chop stuff….the boat goes everywhere. I became very seasick today, spent 5 hours at the rail. Trying to get ready to go on watch, I was thrown off my bench in the fo’c’sle and hit my head hard on one of the berths. This is the stuff that is frightening and no fun. A sailor is required to stand watch regardless of illness. In the rain that came and the driving winds, spending 4 hours in the cold wet night is something to be survived. Seasickness takes away all your strength. It is nearly impossible to walk. On helm, the tiller pitches violently and hanging onto it is sometimes the only way I am not thrown off my feet. The boat looks, from the quarterdeck at night, like it is climbing great hills and then falling headfirst into the troughs below. The handbrake constantly has to be forced down or else the tiller slips and smashes with all the force of the ocean into my thigh. And all this with the realization that 20 foot seas are really nothing at all. Going around the Horn 100 foot seas and 100 knot winds are not unheard of. I realize that as hard as this seems it is a drop in the bucket of what a sailor can encounter. On watch we look out for each other, Will knows I am feeling horrible and arranges tasks so I have less to do than usual. All sailors get seasick from time to time, it is inevitable.

After watch is more “trying to sleep”. The fo’c’sle is downright hazardous, it takes many minutes to get the layers of clothes off. Belt with knife and flashlight and marlinespike, waterproof foulies, then the wool hats and throat scarves, then the sweaters and wool pants. All these come off in the violently pitching blackness. I grab at the foremast as something to hold onto a little. The cotton underlayers just stay on; they can come off later when the berth is warm enough. We have lee cloths, designed to make a rail against getting thrown out of the berth. They sort of work. One crewmember didn’t put his up and was thrown onto the floor from an upper berth. Even with them, I never really sleep. One hand is always hanging onto something, in subconscious anticipation of the moment when the boat will lift up so hard that I am airborne and could be thrown out. And in about 7 more hours it is time to stand another watch.

2/22 The weather is the same and we are low on fuel. And I am so, so tired. The captain decided to head into Sausalito, we are coming up parallel to Point Reyes. There are huge storms coming, and I am not sorry we have to get off the ocean. The  _ Lady _ is capable of taking the conditions; the original  _ Lady  _ made it around the Cape and that is what she is built for. However, having “gotten the point” of bad weather out to sea, I am gleeful we will turn in.

2/23 As the watches continued I came on deck to see in the distance what had to be the Point Reyes light. Living on land, lighthouses seemed like cute places to visit with a purpose that used to be valuable but by now was surely archaic. Another bubble burst…not only is the light invaluable for ships at sea to navigate by, it is one of the most welcome sights a sailor can see. Catching sight of something on land that is recognizable seems very exciting. Will spent the day making paper flowers since we were all Going to San Francisco…By 10:30 at night we were all wearing our flowers in our hats as we sailed near the Golden Gate. That sight of the the lights of the bay on a clear night, in the open air, was one of the most special memories of the trip so far. The bridge looked like a jewel. Since I was raised here, it really felt like a homecoming to me. All the crew had permission to go wherever on the boat they liked; I chose to climb way out on the head rig and sit on our furled forward sail. It feels like being in a saddle, with the ocean spray under my feet. That way I was also the first one under the bridge. We fired our cannons off as we passed under, and eventually docked at the Bay Model in Sausalito across from the derelict Wapama.

2/25 We inadvertently had a day off because the fuel dock in San Francisco was out of diesel. However it didn’t amount to much because we were in a berth that was reserved for another vessel, and at any moment might have to leave. We were allowed to go as far as the Bay Model for 40 minutes at a time or so but we constantly had to look out for Blue Peter. Blue Peter is one of the signal flags that means, get back on board immediately. Leaving San Francisco was amazing; the captain ordered reefed topsails to be set before we crossed under the bridge out onto the ocean. This is a process by which our top sails can be manually shortened for less sail area. That way the sail can still be kept set in the event of stronger winds than were originally anticipated. Reefing is done very infrequently on the Lady and it was a rare event for someone like myself to participate in. So as we went under the Golden Gate this time, all the crew was aloft on the top yards bouncing and sloshing along in the surf trying to shorten a whole lot of cloth. The sun shone in a cloudless sky, the water rolled along in beautiful blue green tones. As we exited the bay we encountered some huge swells, the kind that look like they are going to flip the boat over but every time we just float to the top…..

2/27 The transit to Morro Bay was uneventful except at its conclusion. As we came towards Morro Rock, my watch was on duty. Morro rock at night is this intimidating looking mass of stone set in front of the massive triple towers of the PG&E power plant. Shore lights abounded, but to my untrained eye the harbor entrance location was a mystery. And my turn for bow watch came up at the same time half a dozen porpoises came to escort the Lady most of the way in towards the bar. They stayed with us, darting in and out around our bow; they were the most lovely things I’d ever seen. I could hear them talking to one another as they played with the Lady. Some manner of creature lives in the water that is phosphorescent when disturbed or irritated, so the water in effect glows in the dark as the boat or anything else moves through it. The people at the Monterey Bay Aquarium said they are most likely tiny jellyfish. The porpoises made trail after trail as they played near us. It was so interesting it really made it kind of hard to care about being a lookout…..but… .

The Morro bar is the third most treacherous bar in the country; a narrow, shallow entrance right next to a rocky jetty with frequent swells. The Coast Guard came to assist us in, and launched a parachute flare for us to clearly see the entrance to the harbor. Within the hour we were at last tied up next to the  _ Hawaiian Chieftain _ , the topsail ketch we sail in consort with in California waters. I had really, really missed my friends on board the Chieftain and it was WONDERFUL to finally be all together again.

This concluded the whole transit south. I’ve seen things I couldn’t imagine. A moonrise 4 times larger than any harvest moon I’d ever seen, and the moon tinted blood red as it rose. Sailing by the constellations, watching them as they tracked through the night sky, seeing the stars rise and set on the horizon. And on the nights of less moonlight, seeing the whole Milky Way spread across the sky with nothing to block the view anywhere. Seeing the flukes of powerful whales from a few yards away as we made our way south together. The feel of the sun and wind on my skin as we sailed under blue skies and cobalt water, listening to the wind rustle in the sails with no other sound but the boat moving through the water. The bonding of four people standing watch at 2 in the morning in the rain….and the great thing is, adventure on the  _ Lady _ never ends. All of us as crew become part of her, and she is part of us. Once our time is up all of us will return again, for a day or a week or whatever we can manage. We see in the faces of the children who visit that we keep alive a dream, something for everyone to share in. It is work that feels good, and makes for smiles wherever we sail.

Love to You All

 

#  **11) A CHILD’S EYES**

Hello everyone, I will have better computer access for the rest of my sailing time. Apologies if you are receiving duplicate messages, Hotmail has had some format changes which have made distribution lists more difficult to work with……

With the ocean transit over, another transit of sorts had to take place; that of beginning our educational mission as a crew. All this time the talk has been of the  _ Lady _ and trying to learn to sail her, but the  _ Lady _ herself exists for a reason. Most of that reason is children, particularly 4th and 5th grade classes.

Each of us aboard becomes a teacher every day of the week. We dress in 18th century clothing. (I am deeply attached to my tricorn hat at this point in life!) Our goal is to take the short time we have with each group of young people, and hope that we are able to give them a glimpse of how their time on board connects them 200 years in the past. Not history in a book, but living history.

The original  _ Lady Washington _ , and her companion the  _ Columbia Rediviva _ were the first vessels flying under the new American flag of the 13 colonies to depart from Boston on a mission to round Cape Horn and explore/establish trade with the natives of the Pacific Northwest. The Lady arrived in the area of northern Washington and environs in 1788.

She traded in furs, particularly otter, which were fabulously valuable as a trade good with China and the orient. Because of the explorations the vessels accomplished, the US government later sent out the Lewis and Clark expedition in search of a Northwest Passage to these newly found areas of wealth.

More exploration……Manifest Destiny……so as they sit on the wooden decks of our boat, the children are for a moment bound up in a very real part of the reason why they are citizens of this country; and even why this country exists at all where it does. Had the Lady never left port, it is not inconceivable I would be typing from a corner of Mexico at the moment.

History isn’t the only bit of learning we want them to have. They raise a sail, they feel the burn of the line on their hands and the weight of the halyard as they work together. They have for a moment the same ache in their arms as we do to set the canvas. On longer programs they set every needed sail on the boat and follow sail commands from the sailmaster.

We all sit down to reflect on the life of a common sailor 200 years ago. The average age back then was 12 years old. Younger children as well would have been deckhands. The smallest and the lightest would have been sent the highest into the rigging. Statistically, one in four of them would have fallen at some point. One in ten were washed overboard. To eat they would have had hard tack and salt junk. The workday was 12 hours, many would become ill with scurvy. Survival into one’s early twenties was an achievement.

The common sailor could not read or write, or calculate. By default with modern education, each of our visiting schoolchildren has had enough educational opportunity to have qualified to become on officer.

Officers had the responsibility of navigating. They had better pay, food and clothing. They knew the uses of the chip log and the lead line to measure vessel speed and ocean depth, and they could translate the recordings made in the pegs of the traverse board into plotted points on a navigational chart. They knew to fire their cannons at land, and note the amount of time it took for the report to echo back at them. This let officers compute their distance to land and map the coastline should visibility be unfavorable.

Most of all we want our visiting schools to sit a moment under sail in silence. To think about what they smell and hear and taste. And also to think about what they don’t hear. Many are so accustomed to the idea of an engine moving a boat that they have a moment of disbelief upon realizing that the Lady is moving only under sail.

When many of us crew were in school ourselves we learned to dislike learning. We all do our best with each and every educational program to

help them experience, to have a glimmer that learning can be fun. And that the more they learn, the more fun they can have.

I have seen a huge volume of children even in my short time aboard. They always make me think. Some groups are lively and quick witted, others slow and reluctant to participate. Ironically the ones I often spend the most time with are those who are seasick. I see them, as a group, learning the same lessons I myself learned through sailing. Mind over matter…….or not. Good attitude and success……..or not. The boat seems always ready with the learning opportunities; it is up to each to absorb them as able.

Sometimes the children really swell our heads and ask the crew to autograph the journals they bring on board in which to write of their experiences. That always makes us feel like a pack of rock stars….

Chances are, the crew is still having more fun than our students. But a lot of that must be the pleasure we get out of showing them our world, of seeing their eyes glow with interest at the things they never thought of. We expect each and every one of them back as volunteers in 8 years!!

*****

While in Morro Bay and Santa Cruz I began to succumb a little more every day to what we call the Boat Crud. Officially the Boat Crud is a cough that lingers for weeks and aside from being annoying, is generally harmless. Being the special sort that I am, I acquired the Extra Version. With fever. One day I woke up quite unable to function, and that was that. Being sick on board, stuck in one’s berth, rates as an experience in itself. I learned things like, our decks are even thinner than I thought, so I heard every Life as a Sailor segment taught that week. I think it was up to about 18 times….I love hearing how different crew teach the same information to the children. Battle sails are really intriguing, and the cannon fire isn’t even that loud below decks.

I would try to resurrect myself each afternoon to help out with dockside tours. I became purser’s assistant, and helping run our little store isn’t too taxing.

But I still lost ground. After a week and a half of this, I had an opportunity to get home to my own doctor. By this point I had gone so far into Sailor Mode (stick it out, it’ll be better tomorrow…maybe!!…..) that I still didn’t want to leave. Things like this are what a sensible first mate is for; I was ordered to go and get well. Good thing, because I’d worked my way into pneumonia. 5 days and some antibiotics later, I caught back up with the Lady at Pier 40 in San Francisco.

I doubtless owe the quick recovery time to just how healthy I’d become; modern antibiotics merely had to kill the Boat Crud. Rested and mostly not coughing, it was back to work. The time away, however, let some final transformation take place. The ensuing days of sailing have been some of the best in my life.

The  _ Lady _ has (give or take a few) 141 running lines that one needs to know in order to grasp the full function of the vessel and its sails. What makes it tick, so to speak. I had never fully learned what all of them were; I had my certain set of lines that I felt comfortable handling and always ran for those. A fellow crewmember put a stop to my ignorance on my first day back. For 2 hours I was dragged all over the boat until I could say what each one was without mistake. It was the best thing anyone had ever done. The next day, I realized it all finally made complete sense. Reef, bunt, sheet, clew, bowline, brace, halyard, downhaul, tack, outhaul, brail…..it just all finally made sense. The best land analogy I can come up with is, it’s like the first day you as a new computer user understood the difference between RAM and your hard disk. (and if that hasn’t happened yet, don’t give up……!!) And not only did the  _ Lady _ herself become comprehensible at last, but I found that all my fears of being aloft were simply gone. I have been climbing and climbing and I no longer fear I am about to lose my grip and fall….I know that I am okay. I realize, that I have a space in my heart in which I’ve become a square rig sailor. I hear and smell the ocean now, and when I’m away from it I miss it terribly. I go to sleep thinking about the feeling of hauling on lines. Someone warned me about this. It simply means, I will always have tall ships as part of my life.

Sailing on the Bay has been breathtaking. We tack and wear and brace around beautifully now. There can be ocean-like moments, but for the most part the waters are calm and the winds are blowing. I spend sunny afternoons gliding past Alcatraz and the Golden Gate, early evenings we cruise as the lights of San Francisco come on. Huge cargo vessels of every description move within hundreds of yards of us. Lunatic sailboat owners and windsurfers nearly skewer themselves on our head rig. I feast my eyes on the scenery of the city and Bay, and think every moment how lucky I am to have found this.

If anyone has a chance to catch the Great Ships segment on Pirate Ships on the History channel, there is a lot of great footage of the  _ Lady _ in the program. We’re the two masted one with the red yellow and blue sides. The  _ Golden Hind _ and a few other gorgeous tall ships are in there as well. The program doesn’t refer to any of the vessels by name, but so what……….:)

************

One last thing I want to write about is Irving Johnson. One evening in Santa Cruz we were invited to the  _ Chieftain _ to watch Irving Johnson’s 1930’s era handmade video of him sailing on the tall ship  _ Peking _ around Cape Horn.

I’ve probably made reference to the kind of respect commanded by anyone who has survived the Cape. If not, I should have. 100 foot seas, 100 knot winds; such conditions are not unheard of and not even all that unlikely when rounding the Cape. I cannot for the life of me imagine trying it at this point.

Yet in the video, we hear the wisdom of Mr. Johnson: “Well, hear you see the sailor on watch. He’s smart, that one, he’s emptying the water out of his boots in between rolls. Not of course to get drier, the only way to do that was to sleep in your wet clothes. No, he’s just making himself a little bit lighter……See those two sailors on the skysail (skysails on the  _ Peking _ are about at 7 stories tall) yard? That’s me on the left. We have no lines or anything holding us there, why should we? We use one had for us, one for the boat. After all, it would just be silly to let go………now they’re putting up the net, they call those the sailor strainers. They’ve saved many a man from going overboard. Some of course don’t make it. Those two sailors there were missing from their berths after one watch. We didn’t have to talk about it, we all knew………….see the captain? he’s heaving that 50 pound lead line over the side and bringing it back up like it was air….He’s a super sailor, was our captain. He made 57 trips around the Cape………….”

As the film progressed, it became clear that for all we do, we are a bunch of pansy sailors. I am in awe of the men that sailed those huge steel ships with 350+ lines and well over 40 sails, the men with arms as big around as my midsection….the ones that voyaged on these ships for months and years without seeing a port…….wow.

Fair winds!

If anyone can come visit during the bay tour, I’d love to see you! Weekends are best (I never know when my day off is, wouldn’t want to miss anyone) , until April 2 we are in Redwood City, April 3-9 is Oakland (Jack London square I think) and April 10-16 is Sausalito. We’re hard to miss, we’re the tall ships. We tend to be sailing from 10-4 most days, and 4-6 is always dockside tours.

And fear not, the  _ Lady _ and  _ Chieftain _ will be in the Sacramento area in the fall again most likely for any who can’t get to the Bay but would like to see what I’m babbling about.

 

#  **12) PESKY DOCKS**

 

Not counting the time spent in Aberdeen, the  _ Lady _ currently occupies her sixth docking scenario. One would think that in our modern day, docking a boat simply entails sailing or motoring up to a nice, free spot against a nice, level wooden platform. One would think. As it turns out, methods exist for docking that the likes of me had never even thought of.

The greatest invention doubtless is the floating dock. Time on a ship has forced me to acknowledge that these things called tides exist, and that when they do what tides do, water goes up and water goes down. Lots of water. Twice a day. Floating docks therefore are wonderful; they go up and down with the boat and the water. All the objects involved continue to occupy the same horizontal plane, and the sailor’s life is easier. In Sausalito, when we had to duck in for fuel on the way down the coast, I had my first experience mooring at a stationary dock. At night the boat would be level with the water. In the morning one went looking for the 10 foot ladder. To go ashore one had to take the splatline and swing from the lower shrouds. Every hour on the hour each sailor took turns getting up through the night to adjust the mooring lines; either taking in slack or letting some slack out. Ten people in a box, an alarm going off hourly…we all slept lots that night.

Then came Morro Bay, where there was half a dock. We had the best spot in the house; unfortunately, the house was tiny. We tied up to the dock, and the  _ Hawaiian Chieftain  _ had to tie up to us. Each vessel had to set her yards hard over to either port or starboard, in order to avoid spaghetti rigging. This arrangement tends to add many minutes to docking time. And even after the vessels are secure against each other, passengers must still disembark. Most landspeople aren’t too fond of the idea of climbing up and down the sides of the vessels like we do….so ramps have to be erected between the boats. These ramps will kill someone someday. Not the public; we have two sailors at every conceivable place along the way to assist visitors and prevents slips and trips. Nope, they are going to eat a sailor someday. Monstrous little steps which were never designed for the human foot. Nobody helps us up and down the things; we are supposed to be able to stay on our feet. Hmpfh.

Afterward came Santa Cruz, which generated all the best stories. When we first arrived outside the harbor, all we could do was watch all the fun the people were having in the distance on the Boardwalk. With our eleven foot draft, we had to wait hours before the harbor un-shoaled for us. Rather than tack around for half a day, we decided to moor on an anchor ball. Anchor balls are floating metal balls that look suspiciously like exploding mines. They sit there, outside harbors, and even have the advantage of being usable free of charge. Never mind that one needs a rowboat or a love of swimming to accomplish anything more. So there we were, mooring to the anchor ball. Trying to drive our ponderous mass onto a little beachball so that someone could get a line onto the thing. It served the purpose, but it really seems like someone could come up with something else……and then high tide came along, and we could finally motor into the harbor. We had our own dock and everything, this time. However, we calculated the Lady weighed about two times what the dock did. Santa Cruz harbor isn’t terribly protected, either. All the time the surge from the ocean outside sucks and pushes at the vessels, especially the ones sitting at the fringes like we were. Usually the  _ Lady _ uses four mooring lines to dock. We call them, from front to back, the Bow Breast, the Forward Leading, the After Leading, and the Stern Line. However nobody felt terribly secure about the situation at hand so some extras were added. We have these entertaining lines called “dog bones,” which consist of mooring lines with about 14″ of 4″x4″

wood at one end and a large eye splice on the other. The dog bone line is passed around a piling (big sawed off telephone pole like thing at each end of the dock) and then a regular mooring line can be looped around the piece of wood. With all six of these sturdy lines holding our 195 tons in place, we were set for our stay at Santa Cruz. I remember Santa Cruz mostly for insomnia. Admittedly I was down with the Boat Crud, but all night long I lay awake hearing CcccccccccccrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAkkkkkkkkkkkKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK. Every time toward the end of the noise I was ready to fly out of my berth, convinced that the line, the dock or the cavel cleat was about to break. And then the tide would surge back in and the lines would ease. Until the next 10 seconds……….

In Santa Cruz our first mate began docking the Lady continually. If I haven’t mentioned this earlier, “Evil” Ryan at age 20 holds his Master’s ticket for inland waters. In his years of sailing with the Lady he has come far and fast and will likely go on to great things as he gains experience in command. Personally I wouldn’t try to dock the Lady for any amount of money, unless an allowance to hit every obstacle in sight was thrown in. And as it turns out, this can be a valid technique at times. One day we deliberately, slowly, hit the dock as part of a vessel three-point turn. At the time, however, I didn’t know what was going on, and wondered how far out of the water we could push the structure before it scrunched. So this is also a word of advice to anyone who wants to observe a vessel docking anywhere down the road…….stay well back, it’s crazy up there. Not to mention, snapping mooring lines have been known to not care who they slice in half.

Thursday March 9th, came the squall day. The morning spent out on an educational sail, we had decided to make for port. The children were being real troopers, but half the boat was seasick. The seas were getting bigger and choppier, and the decision came to finish whatever parts of the teaching needed to be completed at the dock. The Lady entered the harbor first, closely followed by the Hawaiian Chieftain. Hands were ordered aloft to furl topgallant sails, as the winds were increasing. I stayed on deck because going aloft and bronchitis don’t mix well. I was never so glad to be ill in all my life. In about two minutes everything broke loose, and I have a lot more respect for how fast weather near water can turn violent. The deckhands aloft put in what is called a harbor furl, which is a cut-corners job designed to get the sail tied up and the sailors on deck again as fast as possible. Even when a sailor is comfortable aloft, winds that exceed 25 knots (when one is 80 feet up, standing on a rope and holding on with one hand…) are no fun. Somewhere in the middle of the wind blasting, pouring rain began and the Hawaiian Chieftain was drifting toward us out of control. In a space of less than 30 seconds Captain Ian ordered his anchor dropped and it happened. He was able to pivot on his own anchor and not collide with the Lady. A remarkable piece of seamanship that gained compliments from everyone who saw, this maneuver was a credit to both the Chieftain’s crew and commander. Dropping anchor generally….takes a few minutes.

Meanwhile, our young passengers were belowdecks singing sea shanties, and never knew what happened. The Chieftain docked against us to disembark her schoolchildren, and to wait the squall out. And not soon enough, it was time for me to start my day off.

Next came San Francisco and Pier 40. Finally we had a great dock , except they forgot to give any room to move around in. That location necessitated making a 180 degree turn with almost no space to maneuver, and a decent current sucking away at the boat just to complicate things. Some days I just felt bad for Ryan, but the whole process went better and faster with each attempt.

And now the Lady rests in Redwood City. Same problem as Morro Bay, but this time the Lady ties up to the Chieftain. Behind the two vessels moors a palatial yacht called the “Bah! Humbug” which I have never seen move, and which if gone, would give space for both tall ships. Oh well! Wherever you dock, there you are……..

Fair Winds

 

#  **13) PIGEONS IN THE RIG**

 

Some days on board the Lady just refuse to be normal. The weather was sunny with a brisk breeze, and we were somewhat short on crew. Well outside the Oakland Estuary on our educational sail, the schoolchildren mostly had set the sails for the day. I watched in satisfaction as a line of them were all set to haul on the topgallant halyard, when suddenly with a great flapping feathery flurry a pigeon crash-landed on our main deck. It had struck our rigging. How it managed to not be able to avoid the boat in the middle of the entire Bay is still beyond me, but there it sat.

I stood there blinking at it, hoping that somehow it would fly away and be gone in the next few seconds. No such luck. It flopped and scooted, and I decided that before it ended up falling out the scupper for a quick ride into the Bay, I’d best find out what was the matter.

On land it is a bit of a joke among my friends how many avian rescue operations I seem to get involved in. I don’t really know that much about birds, yet somehow second only to my veterinarian friends do I get called on to take care of injured and orphaned critters.

Very few of the children knew about the pigeon; this was a good thing. One of the biggest challenges faced by the teaching crew is keeping distractions from the tasks and lessons at a minimum. So I marched up to the long suffering yet bemused first mate (who already had so little crew to order about that he may as well have given up for awhile) , and informed him that I would be in the aft cabin helping the pigeon. The poor bird was ignominiously stuffed headfirst into my vest so as to block out its vision, and had begun bleeding from somewhere. Even a few drops of blood loss can be dangerous to such a little body, so I tried to hurry it up. I dragged out the big first aid kit and found some gauze. The bird had torn the hide off a part of its leg, but nothing seemed broken. After the bleeding stopped, lots of neosporin and a light wrap seemed like a good idea….but a boat is no place for a bird. I had to return to work on deck as fast as I could. Then, I spotted a milk carton in the corner. Bird, carton and me climbed up out of the aft cabin, and went into the fo’c’sle after grabbing my coffee cup. With the help of some large color books on square-riggers as a lid for the crate, the pigeon was resting quietly near my berth. With my water-filled coffee cup. I turned the light off and wondered what I’d find in a few hours. Birds of all kinds seem to be the most resilient, fragile creatures. They survive the unexpected only to drop dead at a tiny fright.

Once I reappeared the children greeted me with all of their great concern for our feathered friend. “IS IT DEAD YET???” ” IS IT SUFFERING???? BECAUSE IF IT IS, YOU SHOULD BASH ITS HEAD IN SO IT DOESN’T SUFFER….” “WHERE IS IT???!!!???” “CAN I SEE IT?????”

Uhhhhh…..I think we should let it rest…..so, can anyone here tell me what sailors ate 200 years ago?

No, not pigeons……

After we docked I set the pigeon somewhere quiet in Jack London Square. A flowerpot outside Scotty’s Seafood Restaurant to be precise, out of the way of most foot traffic. Every now and then a person gets to find out if they made a difference in life……but not always. Here’s hoping it still lives a full life, mooching for crumbs with the other 200 pigeons in the Square.

_____________________

The Oakland visit also marks the time when I finally came into possession of a really decent set of 18th century costume clothes. We call them “funnies” on board because they look………funny. Silly. Ridiculous even. It doesn’t have to be this way, but is another symptom of a sailor’s rushed life. The funnies live in several bags in the aft cabin. There are short and long pants, short sleeve and long sleeve shirts, vests, and even the occasional long coat or woolen coat. The sizes range from I-could-fit-three-of-me-in-here to maybe-a-six-year-old-could-wear-this. So you dig through the bag, usually with 6 minutes before you are supposed to be in costume. And having sorted through the bags once, the thought of doing so again when more time affords itself never comes to mind………

My funnies outfit from Morro Bay to Redwood City was some nameless shirt with short pants so big only my climbing harness kept them from falling off.

Then on transit from Redwood City to Oakland, we had a crew meeting and they asked for someone to re-fold and sort the funnies. I volunteered and the Green Sailor was born. Green trousers that fit. A green and white striped shirt that fit. A green vest that matched. I already had a green cotton shirt and a green scarf. And even a green wool jacket! Something must have worked about it since suddenly all the photographers that came aboard wanted to take my picture. I had to laugh, since I doubt many common sailors walked about wearing matching clothing……of green.

Also discovered in the pile was the period-proper pink polka dot shirt…….only Robin ever wore that.

Robin was one of the most special crewmembers. She was a watchmate of mine on the ocean transit, and was often heard to announce, (while wearing her bright red knit cap) “I’m Sailor #4.”

The knit caps made us look a lot like Smurfs, but that was okay. It created solidarity. Not surprisingly my own hat was…green.

I really missed Robin once she left the Lady; she moved on to her new job as cook on the cutter  _ Californian _ . And one day I found Robin’s hat, and in a fit of nostalgia decided that I would become Sailor #4. The tradition must continue….

The sailor #4 designation hails from our stations of responsibility in the event of emergencies such as Man Overboard or Abandon Ship or Fire or Flood or other such pleasant thoughts. Every crewmember has a title or a number.

So one day I was feeling entirely sailor #4-ish……it was a chilly morning in Oakland and we were all enjoying time in which to perform some long overdue maintenance. I had successfully stolen the task of doing some repair work on our fore-topmast-staysail away from our sailmaker Jessup. The only thing I like better than sailmaking work is sitting on the fore topmast staysail, and I was getting to do both. A perfect morning in the head rig, wearing my bright red hat.

Some hours later, one of our new volunteers had a tale to tell….it seems that a concerned member of the public had come up to her in a well-meaning panic, and asked did we know that a little kid was sitting way out over the water in our head rig??

I am frequently mistaken for being younger than my actual age but……..sheesh. I didn’t think the hat was that bad…….

___________

Although more entries will be trickling in about my adventures, at this point in time I am signed off from being active Lady crew and am back at home in West Sacramento. In the weeks ahead I will be exploring some small boat sailing opportunities as well as spending some quality time with friends on board the Hawaiian Chieftain, and possibly some days on board the schooner Talofa out of Santa Cruz. I’d like to thank all those who have been so supportive of my writing, and hope that the stories proved to be enjoyable to all.

Fair winds!

 

#  **14) SAILMASTER**

One morning I stumbled below into the main hold, my thoughts squinty-eyed on the usual topics….what chore do I have this time…..anything but dinner galley……and how many *&^%&% educational sails are there today…….where’s the watchbill……

[The watchbill: (Please bear with me should I repeat the explanations of our boat’s vocabulary words…..I can no longer remember what I’ve written!!) The watchbill is everyone’s schedule for the day. It is a form which the first mate fills out before each day begins, detailing which crew is aboard, who has the day off, who has which chore, who teaches what stations to the children (if a weekday) what time the sails or dockside tours are, who reports to the bo’sun for maintenance work, who does…everything. And also, there are always Words of Wisdom. Profound stuff like: “When Dr. Evil gets angry, Mr. Bigglesworth gets upset. And when Mr. Bigglesworth gets upset, people die!!!!”

And, I should note that the Hawaiian Chieftain’s watchbill also contains entries for Guilt, Blame, and Responsibility. I now feel every workplace should detail these times in a watchbill and then so much more direction can be had to the day……

‘who was that on Blame again??’………

Each weekday morning those represent the two pieces of information that either line the horizon with sunshine and smiles or consign it to storm clouds of gloom. No particular logic has ever been behind my reasoning, yet the potential combination of two educational (ed) sails and dinner galley (an hour-long task which eats into the only free time one has all day) lay like a powder keg on my sensibilities. Nobody should ever have to teach 9 year olds how to sail for 7 hours in a day, either.

Something totally unexpected sat on that watchbill, though. Sailmaster. They listed me as Sailmaster. At first I laughed. You want ME to command the sail…….sure.

Unbeknownst to the public, the Captain often proves as useful as the figurehead on the prow. Lest I be accused of making that up, I but paraphrase the Captain’s own words. He said that, not me….additionally I have the book “Sailing” to back me up. Under the entry “Captain” it encourages the reader: “see ‘Figurehead’ .”

The captain gives overall direction as to what he wishes to happen, back at his helm, and keeps the vessel safe from the marauding deep drafts that ply the waters….other than that, the sailmaster actually runs the boat.

I made some joking comment to Will that the world wasn’t ready for this. “Now my dear, this is your bo’sun talking…..it’s more than time for this, you’ll do fine.” On board, a good bo’sun is what a hairdresser is to a salon or a bartender is to a bar…….the soul of the establishment’s wisdom.

Always listen to your bo’sun. And if the bo’sun speaks with a charming British accent, so much the better.

So the children were aboard, we motored out of the channel into the Bay. Feeling oddly out of place at leaving the main deck, I reported to Ryan on the quarterdeck. It was pretty simple, really. Wait until the children had received most of their instruction on line handling, then set the fore stack first. Leave the headsail to whoever was teaching about Life as a Sailor.

But my day on the quarterdeck was a fascinating opportunity to receive firsthand instruction as to the methods by which the officers manage the vessel. Ryan pointed out the magnitude of the current….it was swirling back out the Golden Gate so fast that a nearby buoy created the optical illusion of moving through the water at rapid speed. Of course the buoy was stationary, but at first glance didn’t look that way.

In preparation for setting sail, “IDLE HANDS ALOFT!! LOOSE TOPS, TOPGALLANTS, FORETOPMAST STAYSAIL!!” “Hands aloft to loose tops, t’gallants, foretopmast staysail, aye!” This is the call that as sailors we wait for like a racehorse waits at the starting gate….run up into the rigging and play with gaskets……!!

Finally the children had come to some readiness, and I could begin my happy yelling. “HANDS TO SET THE FORETOPSAIL!!” Some kind of magic exists in the words of sail command, the phrases lost to time everywhere else but here, by which the Lady comes to life. Under sail she is a creature of beauty and we are all proud of the process by which she moves.

The necessary stations begin calling back: “Ready port/starboard sheet!” “AYE, PORT/STARBOARD SHEET!!” (Sheets, needing 3 children or more per line, draw the lower corners of a square sail down and out).

Repeating commands orally is how we communicate; an order which has not been called back is assumed not to have been heard or executed. This too is traditional. I have never in my life been so glad of some voice classes I took which taught me how to project my voice without straining…

“Ready port/starboard gear!” “AYE, PORT/STARBOARD GEAR!!” (Gear are the lines, always at least one but as many as four depending upon the sail, which draw the sail back up and in toward the yard, and therefore have to be let loose so that the sheets can be set).

“Ready halyard!” “Ready port/starboard brace!” “AYE HALYARD!!” “AYE PORT/STARBOARD BRACE!!” (The halyard stands for ‘haul yard’ and is a heavy line that raises the yard up, thereby stretching the sail taut at all four corners. The small topgallant yards weigh hundreds of pounds, the large top/crossjack/course a few thousand pounds.) (Braces are the lines that swing the yards from side to side. If one side hauls, another side must ease as they work in opposition to each other. Also as the halyard is hauled the braces must be slackened in tandem.)

At this point something like 30 children are distributed among the lines to set one sail. The same job still requires 10 deckhands if one assumes that a sailor has to take on only one station…..a good ratio is three children to do the hauling job of one adult sailor.

“CAST OFF YOUR GEAR AND SHEET HOME!!” “Cast off your gear and sheet home, aye!!” Sometimes the windward or leeward side is done first, sometimes both sides are done at the same time. The Lady has the interesting quirk of some of her sails not fitting on her yards correctly as they were made a little too short, so some alterations usually have to be made. “SIX INCHES OF SLACK IN YOUR PORT SHEET AND SHEET HOME TO STARBOARD!!” “Six inches of slack in your port sheet and sheet home to starboard, aye!!”

“TEND YOUR BRACES, HAUL YOUR HALYARD!!” “Tend your braces, haul your halyard aye!”

This process is repeated ….”HANDS TO SET THE FORE TOPGALLANT!!”…..”HANDS TO SET THE MAIN TOP!”…….”HANDS TO SET THE MAIN TOPGALLANT!!”

And we sail along.

But of course then the boat has to be maneuvered……”HANDS TO THE MAIN BRACES!!” “Hands to the main braces, aye!”

“Ready port!” “AYE PORT!!”

“Ready starboard!” “AYE STARBOARD!!”

“FOR A SHARP STARBOARD TACK, MAINS’L HAUL!!” Six people now work in unison to make the three yards rotate around. Two people work frantically on the heavy crossjack yard, while the person hauling the topgallant brace tries hard to barely pull.

The variations on the foregoing bring to mind the patterns of square dancing…..”HANDS TO WEAR SHIP”……..”HANDS TO TACK SHIP”………the bewildering array of sail commands marches on, and the sailors make it so.

Just as there is a method to setting sail, there exists a means to douse sail.

As it mostly constitutes a reversal of the aforementioned, I’ll spare the blow-by-blow description.

(and the crowd cheers…..)

I learned much more than how fun it is to be Sailmaster during my morning in Officer Country. Our first mate Ben spent a lot of time pointing out methods by which to sail the  _ Lady  _ efficiently and explaining the logic behind many of the command decisions. A window was open for a few hours, and through it I could see another level of the knowledge and experience needed for the mastery of operating vessels like the  _ Lady _ . It has been said that more people know how to operate the space shuttle fleet than sail a traditional square-rigger. I suppose the astronauts stand hand in hand with the future……as do we with our heritage and our past.

“IDLE HANDS ALOFT TO FURL SAIL!!……….”

If all of this made no sense whatsoever, it is an even better reason to come visit and haul on the braces with us!

Fair Winds

  
  
  



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